C++, or any programming langauge could also be called a mistake if it was used to write a bad program.
The same applies to CSS. CSS is not a mistake, it's just not used corretly a lot of the time.
"Now we get to the web where in many cases the presentation is creative and graphical. Zeldman gives an example a site's "Join Now" text being inside font tags which are inside a table. He suggests replacing this with Join Now and add CSS stuff for h2. This is wrong! The text is not a heading, and
should not be used. It is simply some text. The correct markup way to do this is to define a class p.joinnow in the CSS, and in the body use
Join Now
."
But the "Join Now!" is supposed to be a prominant part of the page, therefor it should be a heading and NOT a paragraph.
Even so, if you did go down the horrible road of assigning classes to everthing (Not the best use of CSS). You could have a class called p.label etc.
The key is to break you page down into sections, and figure out exactly what everything is. Is this additional infomation? An advert? Part of the current content? Part of the navigation? Once you do that, you only need to set-up a few classes, and use them accordingly....Modularity. Programmers should be familier with way of thinking.
99.9% of new web browsers are obese. What this guy essentially wants is for me to upgrade my browser so he can use his fancy tricks. But he doesn't want to help put pressure on browser makers to get their browser under 8MB.
No he doesn't. Tell me where in the artical he says that.
He wants to get people to dump all the crappy hack and bloated code so future devices will render pages, and so people will dissabilities can still use the web.
As I have said before. Most the/. community is utterly cluless or missinfomed when it comes to web standards.
HTML should return to its original strength of simplicity. HTML code should have a minimum of noise, and maximize content. Good design is not the same thing as gimmicky fluff. Plan words with a few pictures can tell almost any story worth telling among human beings. Good design gets out of the way and lets the words and pictures speak. It's only the gimmicks which go obsolete, never good design.
If you read the artical properly, you would realise that this is Zeldman's goal. Sites should be using simple, logical, and descriptive HTML, then jazzing it up with CSS if desired.
Only reason Mozilla and IE are forgiving if you leave out the doctype is because they go into quirks mode, it's unrealistic to go through and make every HTML doc in existance stanards complient.
HTML was always supposed to be strict, but simple. I'm not sure where you got the idea it was supposed to be forgiving. Since when has any progamming language or mark-up language designed to be forgiving? Forgiving may seem OK to start with. But i only ends up in confusion.
"Can someone tell me, is <b> go and <a href="somelink">click me</a> now</b> illegal in XHTML? Does it need to be <b> go and </b><a href="somelink"><b>click me</b></a><b>now</b>"
No it is not illegal. Why should it be? I think you need to learn XML first before you can start saying whether it's easier to learn or not.
Take the <P> tag for example. When you have to explain the <P> tag to someone, at the moment it can go something like this:
bob1: "A <P> should have a closing tag, but it still works without it." bob2: "But what's the difference" bob1: "Well, If you don't close it, then you need to use the tag like a <BR> and place it where you want the gap, but if you do close it, you have <P> at the beginnig and </P> at the end." bob2: "does it make an difference to the way the browser renders it?" bob1: "Sometimes. It depends on the browser. If you had a <P> tag in between each paragraph, and no closing tag, then you won't get a margin at the top. but if you wrap each paragraph in <P> tags, then you get a margin at the top. Little things like that." bob1: "It also causes problems when you want to apply other things to that tag, because the browser will interperate it differently depending on which one you use".
Or it could go something like this:
bob1: "all <P> tags must have a closing </P> tag".
You see what I'm saying? XHTML is so mush easier because of it's rules. It's very clear on what's allowed an what's not. If they do something wrong, it won't work, just like a programming language. They will quickly learn what's wrong, and correct it. How are they supposed to know they made a mistake if they don't have a clue they made one because the browser corrected it for them? They'll just keep making mistakes. And a time will come when a browser won't be so forgiving.
...And your post sounds like a cheap way to get karma. The book isn't about backwards compatability with old browsers. Infact, the title of the book should explain everything ("Forward compatability").
How this post got a score:5 just shows how the/. commuity truly has no understanding of web standards at all.
I see so much missinfomation on this site when it comes to web standards, it's no wonder/. seem to treat web standards like MS, rather than encorage it like it does with freedom/privacy issues and open source issues.
Personally, I hate standarization. Not the act of making a standard, but just the insane complexity that we've gotten from the W3C crap. Take a look at the HTML4 spec, then look at previous version of HTML. It is needlessly complex.
Some could say thay programming languages are too complex, and that we should forget OO progamming and go with more basic languages like VB script.
But the good thing about HTML/XML/CSS is, you don't have to use the more complex stuff if you don't want to, just use the stuff you need.
In most cases, the more complex things are just addition tools for you to use. They're not compulsary. A [P] tag is still a [P] tag.
Speaking of needless complexity, CSS is a pain in the ass. If I wanted to change the font size of a particular section in an HTML document, I would simply put a tag (or change a tag) at the beginning and end of that section. No muss, no fuss. With CSS, I have to edit both the HTML document AND a seperate CSS file, which is anything but simple.
That's probably because you didn't write your HTML properly.
You should never have to edit the HTML. You should have set it up properly in the first place by applying IDs to each major section. for example Like [DIV ID="nav"] [DIV ID="content"] etc.
Trust me. If you know what your doing, and not just making stuff up, or too lazy to learn things. CSS is a much much easier way to change the look of a page.
Don't say bad things about a tool just because you don't know how to use it.
Support non-traditional devices, from wireless gadgets and web-enabled cell phones fancied by teens and executives to Braille readers and screen readers used by those with disabilities--again without the hassle and expense of creating separate versions.
Ain't gonna happen. Last time I checked lynx wasn't going to show images anytime soon, and neither would my cellphone. Some things just won't work for everyone. Unless of course, you want to convert your "picture gallery" to ASCII.
One would think that a/. reader would have a little more common sence than that. Of course some sites aren't going to be accessable. But why would a blind person, or a person with a text based browser go to an image gallery anyway?
Making sites accessable for other devices is piss easy if you not lazy and acctualy learn how to do it. It's more of a practice in changing the HTML structure, and using a few helpful tags (tags that are helpful to veeryone BTW, like the TITLE attribute in A's), rather than changing the entire look and feel or learn lots of new, strange code.
neither Mosaic (the first visual browser) nor Netscape 1.0 support HTML table-based layouts
So lets all just use HTML 0.1 with only br tags and a tags. Whine whine whine...!
That's the whole idea! Why use tables for layout and other silly hacks when you can write simple HTML and jazz it up with CSS (which will give you a much better results anyway).
Slashdot is already obsolete because they'd have to do some major chnages to get it to work on other devices. Infact they already have redundant code. It's called "light" mode, and it would be completely redundant if/. used HTML and CSS.
When he says obsolete. He's talking about future browsers. Not current ones. And it's not just limited to browsers either.
The result is quite obvious: using CSS is NOT a route to gaining compatibility and avoiding hacks - more than likely its going to involve additional hacks and even further limit browser support.
Nothing could be futher from the truth. Which is easier? Going though 1000's of documents, and changing the FONT tags, or simple change one value in a CSS file? And don't tell me that a search and replace will do the trick, I live in the real world.
BTW, instead of sending us a link to a bad portal on web compatabilty. Could you please back up your statment with some real facts and examples?
It is about examing existing markup in order to use HTML in a semantic manner. Use H1-H6 for headings instead of FONT elements combined with B, I, EM, STRONG, BIG, etc. Apply CSS rules to meaningful elements (e.g., CITE, ADDRESS, etc.) instead of throwing SPAN and DIV elements in there simply to affix style rules.
Exactly right. I think it's ironic that so many people here think this guys full of crap, when infact he's preaching what programmers know are important ideas in programing: Modularity and structure, and looking for the simplest most efficient solution.
Relying on HTML to solve these problems is outdated. We have back-end scripts used to deliver cutomized presentations depending on the browser used to visit the site.
That's the very thing that he's talking about. Time and money wasted delevoping different versions of the same site. What happens when a new browser comes out, or more people start using wireless PDAs to surf the web?
Having different versions of code maybe easy for a small site, or a dynamic site with only a few templates, but for large sites it's a nightmare.
You can use customized icons for the folders, y'know. It's a bit annoying for windows, but at least 10.2 gives you little badges of their parent app to help.
I still prefer text labels, they much more descriptive. Plus I (and others) Don't have time to customise folders all our folders.
In my experience, this is false. Granted, I'm not minizing windows every five seconds, but in everyday use I find that Dock icons are where I've left them. I even have magnification turned on, and I find that dragging stuff to the Dock isn't as big of an issue as I thought it'd be, because the Dock keeps the current icon immobile -- the magnification effect cheats by moving the other icons around, while my target stays where it was.
Unless you never open up apps that aren't on the dock as shortcuts, all the icons move since the dock is centered.
Just put your main Application folder in the Dock, and you'll have one-click access to all your apps, like the Apple menu of old.
But then you can't drag files onto them. Most of the time, this is how I open a file. I find it easier than navigating from the HD to the file again using the open file box.
...Well I think you post was still ignorant of the fact that most people wouldn't know the four forces, and even if they did, would probably not be able to explain the relivant difference between each one.
Most people don't remember half the stuff they learn in school unless they use it....Most of the population aren't phyisicists.
I've heard these arguments over and over about the Dock. No one has a problem with the dock unless they are already thoroughly entrenched in some other mechanism. I'm convinced that it is the pain of un-learning something else that makes people hate the Dock. Try this - put some newbies in front of Mac OS 9 and tell them to launch the browser. They won't be able to do it. Where is the browser? 4 levels down, inside the Apps folder, with no visible way to get there. OS X solves this. The dock may have some significant limitations, but it's hardly the disaster some make it out to be.
The dock is a problem.
1). The text only comes up when you hover over it. This isn't so bad for applications, but is silly for folders sitting in the dock, 5 folders sitting in a row with no idea what is what.
2). Space waster. It takes up alot of space. Reducing the size of the icons makes it difficult to tell what is what since there is no text. You could hide it, but that has obvious problems. You could also turn on the magnify feature I spose, but that means you still have to hover over the icons anyway, not to mention that the animation may be off-putting.
3). Lack of functionality. In OS 9, you have pop-up folders. This meant you could drag files onto shortcuts, or into the folder it's self. You could also drag stuff out of the folder. The view was also highly customisable, just like a normal folder.
The dock has none of this, You can only drag things onto the icon, and that's it. If it did act like the pop-up folders in OS 9, you would have workaround for lack of sub-menuing on the dock.
4). Memory muscle it useless. Since the whole thing is centered, and shortcuts are in the same section as permanent shortcuts, the shortcuts will quite oftern be in a differnt place.
5). Lack of clarity between shortcut icons and apps that are open canbe confusing, not to mention it can be easy to overlook the status of an app/shortcut/icon.
6). No sub menu for apps, this is a problem since the idea is not to use the Apple menu for custom apps anymore. You can create a folder with shortcuts, but read part on lack of functionality above.
The windows taskbar has some major problems, but it got's alot of these right. Test labels, shortcuts stay in the same place, running apps are seperate, and are arragned by the order they are opened in. It's also left aligned, so apps already opened aren't affect by new apps opening.
Re:EVERYONE, LOOK AT MY INTELLIGENT COCK
on
The Casimir Effect
·
· Score: 1
Bleh...Did I ever claim to be intelligent? No. I'm dumb. So please don't bother to point out my spelling mistakes because I don't care and will probably just repeat them.
Re:forces between objects?
on
The Casimir Effect
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
The guy is asking a perfectly vaid question. Just because you have a good insight of physics, it doesn't mean most of the populaion does.
You maybe smart, but you seem to be ignorant.
Instead of showing your cock off to everyone about how intelligent you are. Why don't you acctually explain the difference?
Why not go straight for the cash, and patent the CPU cycle. You could charge $1 per cycle. You'd only have to get someone to operate the latest P4 for a day and you'd be richer than Billy G.
But this happens with fonts anyway, or if the font sizes are different. Or if the browser interperats the containing block to be a different dimention. So I'm not sure what that has to do with embedded fonts.
Most people shouldn't, and don't use the BR tag as a wrapping tool anyway.
You're not supposed to have that kind of control over the formatting of a webpage...HTML wasn't intended for that purpose. As for CSS, yes, you could specify a particular font, but the user is free to set up his browser to substitute a different font (for legibility or for other reasons). Rather than fight the system in order to try to make a web page shiny, I'd think it would be better to work within the way HTML and CSS were intended to work. (After all, those server-supplied fonts will do bugger-all for someone using Lynx or a text-to-speech tool for browsing.)
And what exactly is the differnce between specifing an embedded font and specifing system font if both can be overridden?
Actually, an infinite amount of times would be ok because they don't quantify the time frame.
But logicly the time frame would extend infinitly to the past if not specified (well, more likly to your birth, but the same affect, unless you could smoking during pregancy).
You seem to be under the impresion that if Apple went Intel, that they would start selling fully PC compatible Macs. I doubt that will happen. The only thing that they want to change is the chip, they will still make their own motherborad. In other words, they will still have control over their hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
C++, or any programming langauge could also be called a mistake if it was used to write a bad program.
The same applies to CSS. CSS is not a mistake, it's just not used corretly a lot of the time.
Join Now
."But the "Join Now!" is supposed to be a prominant part of the page, therefor it should be a heading and NOT a paragraph.
Even so, if you did go down the horrible road of assigning classes to everthing (Not the best use of CSS). You could have a class called p.label etc.
The key is to break you page down into sections, and figure out exactly what everything is. Is this additional infomation? An advert? Part of the current content? Part of the navigation?
Once you do that, you only need to set-up a few classes, and use them accordingly....Modularity.
Programmers should be familier with way of thinking.
No he doesn't. Tell me where in the artical he says that.
He wants to get people to dump all the crappy hack and bloated code so future devices will render pages, and so people will dissabilities can still use the web.
As I have said before. Most the /. community is utterly cluless or missinfomed when it comes to web standards.
If you read the artical properly, you would realise that this is Zeldman's goal. Sites should be using simple, logical, and descriptive HTML, then jazzing it up with CSS if desired.
Only reason Mozilla and IE are forgiving if you leave out the doctype is because they go into quirks mode, it's unrealistic to go through and make every HTML doc in existance stanards complient.
HTML was always supposed to be strict, but simple. I'm not sure where you got the idea it was supposed to be forgiving. Since when has any progamming language or mark-up language designed to be forgiving? Forgiving may seem OK to start with. But i only ends up in confusion.
"Can someone tell me, is
<b> go and <a href="somelink">click me</a> now</b>
illegal in XHTML? Does it need to be
<b> go and </b><a href="somelink"><b>click me</b></a><b>now</b>"
No it is not illegal. Why should it be? I think you need to learn XML first before you can start saying whether it's easier to learn or not.
Take the <P> tag for example. When you have to explain the <P> tag to someone, at the moment it can go something like this:
bob1: "A <P> should have a closing tag, but it still works without it."
bob2: "But what's the difference"
bob1: "Well, If you don't close it, then you need to use the tag like a <BR> and place it where you want the gap, but if you do close it, you have <P> at the beginnig and </P> at the end."
bob2: "does it make an difference to the way the browser renders it?"
bob1: "Sometimes. It depends on the browser. If you had a <P> tag in between each paragraph, and no closing tag, then you won't get a margin at the top. but if you wrap each paragraph in <P> tags, then you get a margin at the top. Little things like that."
bob1: "It also causes problems when you want to apply other things to that tag, because the browser will interperate it differently depending on which one you use".
Or it could go something like this:
bob1: "all <P> tags must have a closing </P> tag".
You see what I'm saying? XHTML is so mush easier because of it's rules. It's very clear on what's allowed an what's not. If they do something wrong, it won't work, just like a programming language. They will quickly learn what's wrong, and correct it.
How are they supposed to know they made a mistake if they don't have a clue they made one because the browser corrected it for them? They'll just keep making mistakes. And a time will come when a browser won't be so forgiving.
How this post got a score:5 just shows how the /. commuity truly has no understanding of web standards at all.
I see so much missinfomation on this site when it comes to web standards, it's no wonder /. seem to treat web standards like MS, rather than encorage it like it does with freedom/privacy issues and open source issues.
Some could say thay programming languages are too complex, and that we should forget OO progamming and go with more basic languages like VB script.
But the good thing about HTML/XML/CSS is, you don't have to use the more complex stuff if you don't want to, just use the stuff you need.
In most cases, the more complex things are just addition tools for you to use. They're not compulsary. A [P] tag is still a [P] tag.
Speaking of needless complexity, CSS is a pain in the ass. If I wanted to change the font size of a particular section in an HTML document, I would simply put a tag (or change a tag) at the beginning and end of that section. No muss, no fuss. With CSS, I have to edit both the HTML document AND a seperate CSS file, which is anything but simple.
That's probably because you didn't write your HTML properly.
You should never have to edit the HTML. You should have set it up properly in the first place by applying IDs to each major section. for example Like [DIV ID="nav"] [DIV ID="content"] etc.
Trust me. If you know what your doing, and not just making stuff up, or too lazy to learn things. CSS is a much much easier way to change the look of a page.
Don't say bad things about a tool just because you don't know how to use it.
The title of the book is called Forward Compatibility. Not Backward Compatibility.
One would think that a /. reader would have a little more common sence than that. Of course some sites aren't going to be accessable. But why would a blind person, or a person with a text based browser go to an image gallery anyway?
Making sites accessable for other devices is piss easy if you not lazy and acctualy learn how to do it. It's more of a practice in changing the HTML structure, and using a few helpful tags (tags that are helpful to veeryone BTW, like the TITLE attribute in A's), rather than changing the entire look and feel or learn lots of new, strange code.
neither Mosaic (the first visual browser) nor Netscape 1.0 support HTML table-based layouts So lets all just use HTML 0.1 with only br tags and a tags. Whine whine whine...!
That's the whole idea! Why use tables for layout and other silly hacks when you can write simple HTML and jazz it up with CSS (which will give you a much better results anyway).
When he says obsolete. He's talking about future browsers. Not current ones. And it's not just limited to browsers either.
Nothing could be futher from the truth. Which is easier? Going though 1000's of documents, and changing the FONT tags, or simple change one value in a CSS file? And don't tell me that a search and replace will do the trick, I live in the real world.
BTW, instead of sending us a link to a bad portal on web compatabilty. Could you please back up your statment with some real facts and examples?
Personaly. I tink Zeldman's just taking the piss out of Neilson's "Flash, 99% bad" quote.
Exactly right. I think it's ironic that so many people here think this guys full of crap, when infact he's preaching what programmers know are important ideas in programing: Modularity and structure, and looking for the simplest most efficient solution.
That's the very thing that he's talking about. Time and money wasted delevoping different versions of the same site. What happens when a new browser comes out, or more people start using wireless PDAs to surf the web?
Having different versions of code maybe easy for a small site, or a dynamic site with only a few templates, but for large sites it's a nightmare.
I still prefer text labels, they much more descriptive. Plus I (and others) Don't have time to customise folders all our folders.
In my experience, this is false. Granted, I'm not minizing windows every five seconds, but in everyday use I find that Dock icons are where I've left them. I even have magnification turned on, and I find that dragging stuff to the Dock isn't as big of an issue as I thought it'd be, because the Dock keeps the current icon immobile -- the magnification effect cheats by moving the other icons around, while my target stays where it was.
Unless you never open up apps that aren't on the dock as shortcuts, all the icons move since the dock is centered.
Just put your main Application folder in the Dock, and you'll have one-click access to all your apps, like the Apple menu of old.
But then you can't drag files onto them. Most of the time, this is how I open a file. I find it easier than navigating from the HD to the file again using the open file box.
Most people don't remember half the stuff they learn in school unless they use it....Most of the population aren't phyisicists.
The dock is a problem.
1). The text only comes up when you hover over it. This isn't so bad for applications, but is silly for folders sitting in the dock, 5 folders sitting in a row with no idea what is what.
2). Space waster. It takes up alot of space. Reducing the size of the icons makes it difficult to tell what is what since there is no text. You could hide it, but that has obvious problems. You could also turn on the magnify feature I spose, but that means you still have to hover over the icons anyway, not to mention that the animation may be off-putting.
3). Lack of functionality. In OS 9, you have pop-up folders. This meant you could drag files onto shortcuts, or into the folder it's self. You could also drag stuff out of the folder. The view was also highly customisable, just like a normal folder.
The dock has none of this, You can only drag things onto the icon, and that's it. If it did act like the pop-up folders in OS 9, you would have workaround for lack of sub-menuing on the dock.
4). Memory muscle it useless. Since the whole thing is centered, and shortcuts are in the same section as permanent shortcuts, the shortcuts will quite oftern be in a differnt place.
5). Lack of clarity between shortcut icons and apps that are open canbe confusing, not to mention it can be easy to overlook the status of an app/shortcut/icon.
6). No sub menu for apps, this is a problem since the idea is not to use the Apple menu for custom apps anymore. You can create a folder with shortcuts, but read part on lack of functionality above.
The windows taskbar has some major problems, but it got's alot of these right. Test labels, shortcuts stay in the same place, running apps are seperate, and are arragned by the order they are opened in. It's also left aligned, so apps already opened aren't affect by new apps opening.
Bleh...Did I ever claim to be intelligent? No. I'm dumb. So please don't bother to point out my spelling mistakes because I don't care and will probably just repeat them.
You maybe smart, but you seem to be ignorant.
Instead of showing your cock off to everyone about how intelligent you are. Why don't you acctually explain the difference?
Why not go straight for the cash, and patent the CPU cycle. You could charge $1 per cycle. You'd only have to get someone to operate the latest P4 for a day and you'd be richer than Billy G.
Most people shouldn't, and don't use the BR tag as a wrapping tool anyway.
And what exactly is the differnce between specifing an embedded font and specifing system font if both can be overridden?
But logicly the time frame would extend infinitly to the past if not specified (well, more likly to your birth, but the same affect, unless you could smoking during pregancy).
Acctually, 15 times would be OK aswell.
You seem to be under the impresion that if Apple went Intel, that they would start selling fully PC compatible Macs. I doubt that will happen. The only thing that they want to change is the chip, they will still make their own motherborad. In other words, they will still have control over their hardware.